The marathon swimming familiarization event set for Tuesday has been canceled, Paris 2024 organizers said.
The women’s marathon swimming event is set to take place on Thursday with the men’s event being held the following day in the River Seine.
World Aquatics later confirmed that it made the decision, in collaboration with Games organizers, to cancel the session due to “water quality concerns.”
“The water quality review showed E. coli levels ranged from 326 to 517 (considered ‘very good’ to ‘good’) at the four collection points taken on 5 August between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m,” the statement said. “However, Enterococci levels exceeded World Aquatics maximum thresholds during the morning review. The latest Enterococci samples (taken between 12:30 and 13:20 on 4 August) showed levels exceeding the maximum acceptable World Aquatics thresholds.”
A further four water quality tests were held today, with one failing to meet the governing body’s standards.
A second familiarization session is set to be held tomorrow, provided that water quality levels meet the required levels.
The statement added that Paris 2024 organizers and World Aquatics “remain confident that the Marathon Swimming competitions on 8 and 9 August will proceed as planned.”
This is not the first training session in the Seine to be scrapped since the start of the Games. Familiarization events for both men’s and women’s triathlon as well as the mixed triathlon relay race were also canceled due to the river’s water quality levels.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo on Monday reiterated that the Seine is clean and safe to swim in.
“There are people who will continue to talk nonsense, who will continue to want to explain that it’s not true… Enough with fake news… It won’t spoil our pleasure because we know what we’ve done,” Hidalgo said while speaking to RMC Sport.
“We’re so happy that the Seine has been cleaned up, that we can swim, after all the mockery and controversy,” she said, adding that it’s time to “enjoy and realize that a decontaminated river will change our lives.”
“After receiving the results of the water quality tests of the samples collected on August 5 between 5am and 6.30am, World Triathlon stands by its decision to go ahead with the [triathlon] races as scheduled,” the sport’s governing body said in a statement.
“Three of the four values for E.Coli were considered ‘very good’, a fourth one was ‘good’. For Enterococci, three were writhing the norms whilst one was slightly above the threshold but it was taken outside the swim course of the mixed relay.”
Meanwhile, Team USA triathlete Morgan Pearson said lessons about water safety levels could be learned from the experience in Paris.
“I think they could have invested more into having clean water. It seems like they kind of were just hoping for the best and know the athletes are gonna do it because it’s the Olympics,” he said.
“I think they could have invested more – maybe differently. It sounds like they invested a lot of money, but maybe, they had the wrong ideas. They need more idea people.”
This post has been updated with statements from World Aquatics and World Triathlon.